12/11/2009

Some friends are discussing wheather you should "sit down to write a haiku", just like a potter sits down to make a cup, or a carpenter sits down to work on a piece of wood.

One situation when haiku poets make up their mind to "write haiku" is usually on a ginkoo, a haiku walk.

You meet with friends, walk around for about 2 hours and "compose" haiku as you go along.Later they are exchanged and discussed.

It is also some kind of advise from my haiku sensei:Go out for one hour by yourself and see what is there to see ... look intensively .

Next the sensei tells you to study the saijiki as a preparation for "making a haiku", since it is essential that you know your kigo when you need it, not the other way around.

Daily life situations also provide the attentive Japanese haiku poet with plenty of material to write about, the point is the "attention" you pay to your daily situations (I hate the word "AHA MOMENT").

If you lead a "haiku life" then anything can turn into a haiku . . .

staring at this screen -I try to find some "nature"to write about

So I guess the Japanese haiku poet has some "tools" like a good carpenter or potter to get into the "haiku mood" ...

When you sit down at your desk and "wordsmith" your haiku, the result is often a

The 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth is being celebrated across the world.

The interesting thing about Darwin is that the evolution of living things does not occur because they want it to happen. On the contrary, living things are in fact ultra-conservative and do not like evolution.snipI am in an evolutionary mood today and am thinking of the history of haiku in terms of evolution. It is 365 years since Basho’s birth and 400 to 500 years since the births of such fathers, or shall we say grandfathers, of haiku as Sokan Yamazaki, Moritake Arakida, Teitoku Matsunaga or Soin Nishiyama who all contributed to the development of Haikai-no-Renga which later begat haiku.snipThe haiku evolution is still with us.snipHaiku now has so many different variants. However, almost all the origins of the modern haiku species outside Japan can be found in America. They experienced explosive evolution through the most unnatural selection ...There have been no survival of the fittest (haiku) because there just has not been any need for these species to try to survive; they have thrived.

Assimilation of the Ma Aesthetic Better Equips Western Poets
to Write Haiku
by Denis M. Garrison

Amongst traditional Japanese aesthetic considerations applicable to the art of haiku writing, ma is arguably preeminent for poets working in another language, for whom much of the treasury of haiku allusions is not available. It is, of course, axiomatic that the better a poet assimilates the full panoply of traditional haiku aesthetics, the better equipped he or she will become; but for non-Japanese poets, ma has special value, I think.

What is ma?
Literally, ma is the sense of time and space, incorporating between, space, room, interval, pause, time, timing, passing, distanced, etc. More particularly, ma may be taken as the timing of space, as in the duration between two musical notes. Silence is valued as well as sound. It is said that the ma aesthetic is influential upon all varieties of Japanese art.

I am not an expert on Japanese traditional aesthetics, in general, nor in ma, specifically. It is not my intent to dissect nor analyze ma in its native context.

What is ma? Well, that's not so easy to explain but without it Kabuki wouldn't be half so interesting as it is. Imagine, for example, this speech that everybody knows -
"To be or not to be?"
(Dramatic pause)
"That is the question."

In Kabuki that pause would be called a ma, and ma are tension filled moments applicable to acting movements, dance, or speech. The internal psychology of a moment is expressed by the actor, who holds the attention of the audience in a pregnant pause that creates tension and emphasis.

Similar to the above example, ma may be expressed in speeches as the tension between the lines of shichi-go-chô - the division into lines of seven and five syllables used in much Japanese poetry. Look at the following example: in order to make things clear I have divided this haiku poem by the playwright and critic, Kawajiri Seitan (川尻清潭) into syllables -

Here one could imagine a dramatic ma pause after Mata Sukeroku no, before completing the poem. Similarly, when the thief Benten Kozō abandons his disguise as a young girl and reveals his name, (Benten musume meo no shiranami - "Benten the Male, Female Bandit") he dramatically lengthens the last syllable of Kozō before speaking the final part of his name - Kikunosuke. An actor with a poor sense of ma might well leave too short a pause and so any feeling of suspense before the completion would be lost.
Although Western poetry does not use shichi-go-chô (partly because Western languages do not have the consonant-vowel parings which make up the Japanese language), dramatic pausing between the lines can sometimes be equally important but perhaps less stylised than in Kabuki.

In movement, mie stop-motion poses demonstrate the most exciting examples of ma. Probably deriving from the fearsome iconography and facial expressions seen on some Buddhist statuary, mie are powerful poses by male characters that serve to emphasize moments of great import or tension. As the action stops, the character assumes a dramatic pose, revolves his head back and to one side and then, snapping the head into position, crosses one eye over the other and glares at his opponent. Mie are usually accompanied by two clear beats of the tsuke wooden blocks. It is the dramatic pause before the winding up and final snap of the head, between the first beat of the block and the second, which is an example of a ma of action.

Mie are unique to Kabuki and there is certainly nothing like them in Western theatre. Dramatic pauses are, therefore, more naturalistic and we find such pauses in Kabuki too. Let's look at the following fantastic example of ma which I will always remember. It was from Nakamura Utaemon VI's performance of Masaoka from Meiboku Sendai Hagi. Masaoka moves to the hanamichi in order to watch Sakae Gozen depart. Having just watched her son being murdered, Masaoka is desperate to run to his body. Watching her leave, Utaemon held the pose with extraordinary tension until, Sakae now gone, he collapsed in anguish. A master actor holding the audience in his hands!

Although we may not have a specific name for them, ma pauses are very important not only to Western theatre but in music too. My son, Misha, who is not a musician, was watching a very famous American conductor, conducting Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," one of the greatest and most influential works of the twentieth century. The final section, the "Sacrificial Dance," is clearly divided into sections by very dramatic pauses. Every one of those fantastic pauses was cut far too short by the conductor, and all the drama was lost as the music flowed along to greatly reduced effect.

"That conductor is useless!" said Misha, and, judging by this example of very bad ma, I really had to agree. In Japan - particularly in the field of Kabuki - one would say his "ma ga warui" - his "ma is bad," meaning he has no sense of timing.

Gabi,I am always fearful of using two kigo in a haiku because I don't know how. It helps a little that you have characterized these as 'strong' and 'weak', and that 'mosquito' is the weak kigo because one can find these insects in other seasons. ???Could you speak to this a little more?L.

Answer... this was part of the teaching of Hasekawa Kai sensei the other day on NHK. Other sensei often say the same.

One kigo is of course best, but since the situation sometimes calls for more than one, like my friend in the bathtub this morning, there is no harm done to be true to the situation.

If you follow my own link, there is a bit from Bill Higginson about the use of two kigo, along the same lines. He uses the word DOMINANT for the strong one.

To be on the safe side, only use one kigo in your own haiku and enjoy the ones with two by the master poets ...

Mosquitoes are best in summer in Japan. Now, as autumn deepens, even they get weaker and once in a while I find one in my bathtub (this never happens in summer).So they show me the cycle of life during the seasons and I use two kigo here, one for my moment in the bathtub and one for the flow of the seasons in the life of the animal.

They remind me that for all of us the end comes when the circle of our life energy is completed.

The smell of incense can be very subtle and faint, so the act of concentrated smelling it is called "listening to incense" (monkoo, bunkoo 聞香 , koo o kiku 香を聞く ) in Japanese.Here "LISTENING" means to use all senses to appreciate one thing in its full potential and with all your attention.

Here the verb "KIKU (LISTENING)" in Japanese means to use all senses to appreciate one thing in its full potential and with all your attention. KIKU is maybe the change of the verb 利く, as in "tasting ricewine, kikizake 利き酒", meaning "appreciating" something.

Here is one explanation for this expression.

In the Buddha's world everything is fragrant like incense, including the words of Buddha. Fragrance and incense are synonymous, and Buddha's words of teaching are incense. Therefore Bodhisattvas listen to Buddha's words in the form of incense, instead of smelling them.